


Of Wolves and Stags

by CheapNightmares



Series: Dark Nights and Pleasant Dreams [1]
Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Creatures & Monsters, Cannibalism, Hannibal is Hannibal, Hurt!Will, M/M, Transformation, Werewolves, is it cannibalism if you're only part human?, maybe fluff?, maybe smut
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-03-22
Updated: 2014-03-22
Packaged: 2018-01-16 14:46:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,972
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1351366
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CheapNightmares/pseuds/CheapNightmares
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Will gets bit by a werewolf. Everything goes to hell. Hannibal is delighted. Will finds out.<br/>Loosely follows the events of Season 1.<br/>I was supposed to post ch2 like five days ago and got busy :/ sorry y'all, I finish typing it up asap</p>
            </blockquote>





	Of Wolves and Stags

**Author's Note:**

> This chapter is a Will chapter. Dashing through the woods.

It had been three days since he had changed and he was already beginning to feel his humanity slipping away. It was both alarming and comforting at once, comforting in that they – Jack, Alana, Hannibal – would never find him and never know what came of him. Alarming in that it was like the slowest suicide in the world. In stronger wolves the complete transformation from human to animal could take weeks, even months (how he knew this he didn't know and didn't care to question it). But in weaker members of the species – beyond the unstoppable monthly transformation it was taboo to turn unless absolutely necessary. This was not something to be romanticized. 

Will Graham continued to lope through the woods, following a nearly invisible deer trail and limping on the broken bone that used to be a thumb, the finger he had used to escape the police van on his way to be detained. For the moment he couldn't remember how he had gotten there but instinct dictated his flight from it. There was a lot of things he had lost over these last months – dropping hours like grains of sand and days like buckets of water. He was sick and the animal inside knew it, driven by fear and the need to distance itself from danger so it could heal. He stank of sickness, a sweet and decayed smell – the cologne he used to wear had long since rubbed off and was replaced by the rather pungent odor of wet earth and stricken dog. His lolling tongue was pink and dry and his breath was coming in rasping gasps – he needed water, but he kept running. He would find water. He would heal. If he gained anything from this it was an iron will to survive. 

A mile or two from where the ex-FBI profiler who wasn't really FBI after all had jumped ship they would find his orange prison jump suit and the vicious bite marks into the fabric, coated in his saliva. He had bitten down on it to muffle the agonized screams as his bones broke and rebroke, his organs growing and rearranging, his heart bigger and beating faster. Eventually his vocal cords stopped being able to scream and all he was left to do was gasp, eyes rolled into the back of his head as everything what made him human melted away and was replaced. Except for his foot, the aftermath didn't hurt, Will thought there was some small mercy in that. 

The human side of him, what feeble part remained in power, constantly replayed the pieces of the scenario that had led him to become this as if in this way he could come to an understanding. It was a puzzle where nothing fit together, the edges all ragged and torn and half of it missing. The wolf that was steadily gaining power loped and limped to a stream and began to drink, the brook water felt like knives on the parched and raw stretch of his throat, it to bed down and rest. It was tired and sore and hungry and not interested in sharing intellectual powers with it's hysterical bipedal half. Eventually Will gave in to more primal instincts and nested in a thick and fragrant bed of leaves, curling nose to tail and heaving a sigh. His last waking, human, thought was of Winston. 

 

O0o0o0o

Three months ago he was still clutching to the idea of normality. He had shot and killed the cannibalistic serial killer that made up Abigail Hobbs' father, and despite the incident his teaching work at the FBI university carried on as usual. His conversations – never sessions, there is no psychiatry between friends – with Dr. Lecter were tense and confused, occasionally unsteady and torn with self doubt. In light of his first kill there seemed as if there was some relief to be had at the end of the dark and damp tunnel he was blindly stumbling down. Even Jack was giving him welcomed space, Will foolishly allowing himself to believe that it could all be okay, allowed himself a sense of hope that he could learn to evict the monsters inside of his head. It was a nice daydream but never more than that, and one of abrupt and bloody end when the first in a series of savagely rendered bodies began to appear. 

These corpses were a far cry from the ritualistic and somehow beautiful displays he had grown accustomed to seeing. They weren't even the product of the simplest act of aggravated passion but stories of pain and hatred and an awful, gnawing hunger, the style explosive and chaotic. It was like a slap in the face.

Will stumbled out of the first scene still half trapped in the vivid show of reanimation, sheet-white and gagging. Far away he could hear Jack shouting, demanding to know what he had seen, what had caused such a visceral reaction. It was all he could do to stagger outside and dry heave into the dead grass. Dr. Lecter's hand rested on his shoulder like an anchor, the thick rumble of his voice coming from somewhere to his left. Will couldn't hear what he was saying over the roar in his own ears, later he would wish he had.

The doctor advised against the young man's participation in finding the hunger-driven murderer after that, but Jack Crawford was never good at taking advice when he needed to the most. People were dying, and that was all Jack Crawford ever thought to care about. 

“We found a mixture of human and animal DNA. The lab is still working to figure out what kind of animal it came from..but it's there.” Beverly's voice came weaving in like a silk ribbon. He was dreaming heavily about it now, paws twitching in a fruitless bid to escape. In the memory Will felt faintly ill at the idea that some creature would be forced to participate in such madness. 

“No human bite marks could be identified off the remains, though, how weird is that?” Beverly was looking at him now, or maybe she was looking at Dr. Lecter. The tall and eloquently spoken man became something of a constant sidekick, a wall to steady himself against. 

“It would seem that our killer has a companion – a dog, perhaps – to help cover his tracks. What do you think, Will?” The good doctor looked at his pale and vaguely frowning companion. The profiler didn't meet his gaze, instead staring vaguely off into a corner with his glasses pressed firmly into his face.

“Biting is sexual...” The profiler muttered and then spoke with barely cutting sarcasm, all his knives blunted and worn “A fine observation, Dr. Lecter, I couldn't imagine myself where animal DNA might have come from.” Will turned away then, rubbing his forehead and hunching over in that age old protective stance, trying to shield himself from gore laid out among stainless steel and bright lights.

Hannibal had only smiled that small, knowing smile that nobody managed to see. If they did it might have sent something dark and slimy slithering down their spine. The remark was rude, yes, but he allowed William more freedoms than others, far more freedoms. 

In the lost boy's dreams, Jack's voice began to boom but it faded away as he drifted into deeper waters, beyond where the movie pictures played. He was following the Raven Stag, but it had teeth – sharp and bloody. 

O0o0o0o

He did not wake as a man, but as a beast, his keen nose alerting him to humans in the area. It didn't smell like search parties – dogs, sweat, and irritation – but more like hunters or campers – beer, tobacco, and wood smoke. The lupine part of him didn't mind too terribly that he was completely and utterly lost with no sense of where he might have ended up now. Or how long he had slept, his joints crackling and popping as he heaved himself to his feet and stretched with a grinning yawn, shaking the leaves from his coat and taking a few tentative steps. All that part of him knew was that it felt better but it was hungry and there was nothing to eat.

For a moment he was peaceful, whatever men were roaming about were of no concern to him for now. Erect ears twitched, flicking back and then forward again as, in this single quiet moment, he was no more than a stray mutt. It had been a bitter realization that he did not transform into the vaguely humanoid and suffering creatures seen on horror movie posters, but something that more closely resembled a sort of oversized German Shepherd. His coat, dulled now from sickness and dirt, was an otherwise glossy dark brown (like the rich hot cocoa he would never be able to indulge in again) and carried a slight wave, nearly a curl in places with scars showing up like drops of white paint. His eyes retained their stormy grey-blue, the color of world-weary sadness. All told he didn't even look the part of some slightly (he wasn't nearly as big as the thing that had attacked him, a memory jumbled and faded) overgrown purebred, but rather a miss matched coupling of breeds, underfed and unwanted with his ribs peeking out pitifully along his skinny sides. 

Sluggishly his humanity awoke, driven by alarm. He felt healthier, clearer, but also less himself, the inevitable slip from man to whatever this could be called – he did not entertain the idea of referring to himself as a werewolf – was speeding up. The longer he stayed in this form the sooner it would happen. He had to regain control of himself – after all, the Chesapeake Ripper was still roaming the back of his mind like a curse and people were dying. Maybe Jack's obsession with saving lives was rubbing off on him. He barked a dry and hacking laugh. 

The change back was less painful, simpler, than it was the other way around, but the mental shock was worse. Will, naked and already beginning to chill, managed to make it to his feet only to promptly pitch forward when he tried to walk as if he had four of them instead of just two. The stumbling, staggering, humiliating hell continued on for a few more before he finally regained his basic motor skills and began to trot towards the smell of campfire and menfolk – if there was a blessing in this it was the fine tuning of his senses. Where there was people there would be clothing and food, though he prayed the camp would be empty on his arrival. He doubted humorlessly that a cluster of rednecks would take so well to a nude and unshaven man bursting into their small territory. 

Although it was a relief to feel the primal urges – hunt, eat, sleep – fade into the background the reintroduction of Garret Jacob Hobbs, dead and grinning, was less welcomed. The ghost of the man he had shot didn't speak, only kept pace with him on his right, a constant reminder of everything that had gone so horribly wrong. The bite mark – a ragged scar – on Will's naked shoulder as like a brand, still angry red and healing. It ached terribly but it was not something he was inclined enough to notice now, the empty hunger in his belly far more driving than any pain could be. 

The smell of woodsmoke was getting stronger and Will trotted faster, almost loping. All he needed were some clothes and some food and then he could focus on getting back to the people he had run from. Hannibal in particular. He had a dark feeling that Hannibal held most of his answers in the cards he always played so close to his chest.

**Author's Note:**

> Your love makes wolf!Will go all belly up for tummy rubs.


End file.
